Re: Detecting (g)m4

[Akim Demaille]

Le 15 juil. 09 à 23:36, A Braunsdorf a écrit :

> Maybe not quite a bug, and maybe not your fault, but configure
> apparently picks the first program called "gm4" in my path, >not<
> the first appropriate m4 or gm4.
>
> My problem is that Sun provides a "gm4" that is old and makes nearly
> all the bison tests fail.  I have installed a much newer one as
> "m4" (what it installs as by default, of course), which is much
> earlier in my path and works fine.
>
> Yes, I can tell it which m4 to use, but the canonical name >is<
> "m4", so that seems wrong.  And yes, I can make (and have now made)
> a link to my m4 called "gm4", but the program's name is "m4", and
> I think the detection should be smarter, especially since it really
> is version-sensitive.
>
> Thoughts?

You are right, of course.  But it's more efforts to look for the  
"best" m4 around, so improvements, unless contributed by some devoted  
user (read my mind ;), are unlikely to be made soon.  Especially  
because I see no existing Autoconf macro to address this issue.  Maybe  
Autoconf itself has one (after all it is probably the most demanding  
M4 application).